


A Fool May Look At A King

by shewhoguards



Category: Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People now, when they tell their stories, say that I was Fitz’s Fool. Do not forget that first and foremost I was Shrewd’s Fool, long before FitzChivalry was anything more than a child stumbling along the path prophecy had laid out for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fool May Look At A King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minnaleigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnaleigh/gifts).



Those who need the meanings of such things written and exact would wish to know the reasons I came to King Shrewd, and more, the reasons I stayed with him. Surely, they say, all men must carry a motive, even when that man is naught but a Fool.

At first, ah, at first I was only a child, but a child who had from birth known what must be done. The prophecies spoke to me, their pull as irresistible as the magnet to the metal, and I went where they guided. Willingly? Mostly, for I was a child and it is easy for a child to feel the status of their own importance and be impressed by it. Still, I missed my parents when I boarded the boat, I missed my sister, and the thought of the great task ahead of me was scanty consolation some nights when I was alone in my cabin.

Arriving was worse. Certainly, I had been used to being an oddity even in my birthplace, where tales of White Prophets are familiar and recognised. But there is a difference between being an oddity and being a curiosity, and this I had not appreciated. Quickly, I became the King’s pet – a valued pet, perhaps, but still a pet and appreciated in the way of a loyal hound rather than a wise advisor. I was different, I was amusing, I could be displayed and shown off but who would listen to the prattling of a pet? After my treatment at home, it was a long fall to being a Fool and the landing was not an easy one.

Now I am older, I can see what I would have been without that fall and, perhaps, be a little grateful for it. My pride needed to be punctured a little, I needed to learn to be wrong. A Prophet who finds that the world bends in accord to him will end in making the future and not foreseeing it and that was not my role.

Besides, a Fool needs to learn to laugh at himself. If he does not, who will?

But for a while, I hated the King and hated more the prophecy that bound me to him. I was more homesick than anyone at court could ever know, and could only survive by making myself a little home from home, a place I could hide and pretend that my parents were not so far away. After the anger came resignation and perhaps that was worse. So treated as a pet I allowed myself to become one, and became as foolish in nature as I was in name. There were a few years where I drifted, spoiled and silly, allowing life to tug me onwards like the current of a river.

And then there was the fitz. Certainly, there is nothing to focus the mind on a prophecy like the subject of that prophecy suddenly arriving, but there was more than that. With the arrival of the fitz, I suddenly discovered I could feel jealousy – something I had not known until that point.

People now, when they tell their stories, say that I was Fitz’s Fool. Do not forget that first and foremost I was Shrewd’s Fool, long before FitzChivalry was anything more than a child stumbling along the path prophecy had laid out for him. For he was a child, with all the emotions which children are allowed – and I never was. Fitz could sulk that he was only kept in the stables, could cry at the lack of attention paid to him, could bemoan that his blood bound him to duty and could never guess that I envied him. Crumbs seem like an enviable feast to those who have nothing to eat, and I had had so little for so long that it was difficult to not see only what he had rather than what he had not. For the vague, stern affection and expectations he received from the King, for the friendly, humble home he received from Burrich, for the ability to be part of the people around him and not separate and distant for them – he never saw why anyone else should want those things. For that reason, I had to keep myself apart from him, consciously Foolish, for there was nothing more likely to make my mask drop than my feelings at his ingratitude for what he did not know he had.

If that sounds petty, forgive me. Remember, I was still very young and while Fitz had family who barely acknowledged him, I had no family at all.

Perhaps it was then I began to love the King. Not the love that ends in two people in bed together, although it was just as unrequited as that love has ever been. No, this was the love of a child, the love of one who works and serves and desperately waits to be acknowledged, and keeps working even knowing that the acknowledgement will never come.

Does it sound Foolish? But there is no loneliness like that of the stranger in an alien land. Having seen what the Fitz had, I found I wanted it. I might have died in return for a kindness for him, certainly I did much in return for his vague fondness. Perhaps, again, it was only the fondness he might have offered to a favoured hound, but it was all I had, and like the hound I was loyal.

He was good at earning people’s loyalty. That much was why Regal could never have replaced him, even without the prophecy. Regal ordered, and cursed and lashed out if he was not obeyed – that much earns good behaviour from people only until they can retreat out of range. But King Shrewd ordered and gave just enough – a brief smile, perhaps the occasional kind word – and for that, people would happily stay and do his bidding forever. How many of those simple affections were given out of genuine feeling, and how many to hold people to him? That much I try not to wonder. It would only hurt to know.

I knew, of course, that he needed me –that the world needed me to be where I was at Buckkeep. Then, though, he was sick and needed me in ways he never had before. I was no longer his brief amusement, his toy for idle moments. I was keeping him alive when there was no-one else left to do so, and though I did so with love, I also knew I was failing.

I had been hurt before while at Buckkeep. A Fool is not important enough to be protected, and is an easy target for a bad temper. My friendship with the Fitz had especially put me in the way of the occasional beating. But I had never regretted the position I had fallen into so much as when the King was ill. There is nothing to underline helplessness more than the inability to provide help to someone you love who needs it. And there is nothing I can compare to explain how powerless I was when forced to stand by and watch as they killed my King.

Forgive me, Your Majesty. I could do nothing, and yet, I know, I should have done something. Had I been able to draw attention to the situation by risking myself, I would have done so. Certainly, I suffered a few blows for my attempts to undo the work the false physician was doing, but when I protested, shouted, tried to interfere people only scoffed as though annoyed by the mewling of a child. Who listens to a Fool? Not even Shrewd, not even at the end, not even when I was the only one left.

I tried so hard to make him listen then, to see what was happening to him. Some days he seemed to hear me and then forgot only a moment later. Some days he smiled at me and called me Chivalry or Verity, looking at me with eyes which saw a different man and a time a decade past. And some days he saw me, and spoke to me as he used to, gently but as to one who was only a Fool and could not be expected to speak anything of significance.

Sometimes it felt as though those days were the worst of all.

I would give more detail, but it would only hurt us both to do so. You surely do not want to hear about the nights where I was afraid to sleep for fear of what they would do to him while I was not there, how I took to catnaps on the floor; again I played the faithful hound so that I could wake if I sensed something was wrong. You do not want to hear how I grieved for him; and if you do you must live without the knowing for that is not something I wish to give you, not today. It is too close, too personal, not yours to take. You know I loved him, even if at the end that counted for naught, and you must let that suffice. I will give you no more.

And so I answer you, why did I stay with my King? There are so many reasons, and yet somehow perhaps they all come down to foolishness. After all, a Fool is allowed to be Foolish, even when he is allowed nothing else..


End file.
